and the real test is just learning how to sit here

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I can feel my heart racing, my hands have not been still for weeks. My mouth is dry, my lungs cannot inhale deeply enough for me to continue breathing.

I don't know what comes next, I don't know when I'm going to see you. I feel lost, scared, terrified--excited. I'm not sure which I feel most, though, and my mind is struggling to prioritise reactions to anything that happens.

Then I see you.

I cannot reconcile the person standing in front of me as the person I've been talking to for the last three months, I cannot work out what I'm supposed to do next. But instinct kicks in and my left foot disappears from underneath me and moves forward. I am moving towards you, as fast as my feet will carry me. I am inhaling air like there is none left in the atmosphere--that I will surely die.

My arms are around you before I can even work out where they are going, I am breathing you in, holding you tighter than I swear I've ever held anything in my life. Scared you will disappear in front of me, that this is a dream, that if I let you go it will all have been a mirage.

And I muster the first words I can force my lips to speak.

"I'm here," I tell you, and all at once, it hits me. I'm here. I am here.

"I'm here," I tell you again, and it's as if I was never not here.